PC | PS5 |
HOW I PLAYED: I played on PS5 with a digital copy.
STORY — 19/20
INTRO (5)
God of War's into is a slow burn that conjures intrigue, develops an atmosphere and introduces the player to basic controls. It had me invested from the very first frame and never let go.
CUTSCENES (5)
The game's use of close-up, intimate camera angles that are jiggly and life-like play into its favour to help tell the story of a father and son on a bonding journey. While there are epic action sequences and jaw dropping visuals, the camera never veers far from the action and hold's you close to the drama. Its all done using the games main engine and the player is handed back control of Kratos through seamless transitions.
WORLD BUILDING (5)
Unlike the previous entires which were loosely based on Greek mythology, this instalment transitioned the series to Norse mythology with the majority of it set in ancient Scandinavia. The world that you explore is richly detailed, full of secrets and deep with lore.
Atreus, Kratos' son has a particular aptitude for languages and will regularly translate and scribe down bits of text. These are kept in the games codex where you can find additional information about enemy behaviors and summaries of the journey thus far.
Your talking head companion, Mimir, is a wealth of knowledge and will tell tales about the various characters of the world and expand their backstories making the world feel alive and lived-in.
While I wasn't personally invested or particularly intrigued by the world I can definitely appreciate how much effort went into its construction and meticulously crafted layers.
The two blacksmiths that help you on your journey are not only incredibly well written and entertaining but felt like they've been there for centuries and have their own backstories and side quests that make them feel established and purposeful.
God of War's world building was deeply impressive and begging to be explored.
OVERALL STORY (4)
I feel like the game's story was stretched a little thin. Your initial goal of climbing the highest peak in the nine realms to spread your wife's ashes was a beautifully simple and elegant concept that could have played out in ten hours. Instead we have this massive world with multiple branching realms and a staggering amount of content to fulfil a simple task. As a result the plot is diluted and the pacing suffers. While the character's do undergo their own growth and uncover secrets about their past it ultimately felt like the developers built an entire golf course when I really could have just gone mini-golfing.
GRAPHICS — 15/15
CHARACTER MODELS (5)
The two protagonists, Kratos and Atreus look incredible. From their armour to their weapons to the subtle changes in their facial expressions. Every little detail is rendered with remarkable skill.
While the other characters in the game didn't look bad by any stretch of the imagination, there was a noticeable difference in their style as they tended to look a bit stylized as opposed to ultra realistic.
ENVIRONMENTS (5)
While the game does place an emphasis on snow and mountains, there are definitely other landscapes and biomes and each one is more impressive than the last. My personal favourite was the realm of the Elves which had a really unique colour palette and a high fantasy theme.
SPECIAL FX (5)
Every visual aspect of God of War just screams AAA big budget. It was all so impressive. Some of the best fire I've ever seen in a game, period. Swinging the blades of chaos looked ferocious and lighting effects were used to create dramatic moments that demanded your attention.
AUDIO — 11/15
AMBIENCE (4)
The orchestral soundtrack did a fine job of supporting the game. Was it Hanz Zimmer Galdiator? Hell no. To be totally honest, a lot of it just blended into obscurity for me. The OST fit the mood of the game well and that's what rally matters. Ultimately though it didn't really move me.
There is a repeating theme sung by the artist Eivør which helped to give the OST an identity and a cohesive feel. I imagined it being the voice of the mother singing to her husband and son as they persevered on their journey.
BOSS MUSIC (3)
The boss music didn't especially stand out for me either; I can't think of one memorable track. Maybe it was buried behind the outstanding sound design? I'm not sure. I just can't elaborate on it and that kind of bothers me. After I finished the game I downloaded the OST and listened to it at the gym a couple of times and honestly forgot I had music on. I didn't connect with it. I hate to reduce an artists work to words like "generic" but that's what comes to mind.
SOUND DESIGN (5)
This probably isn't unique to God of War but it really stood out to me here in a good way; I'm going to call it dynamic ambience and here's what I mean: Anytime you enter a new area specifically a room or tunnel, the ambience of Kratos and Atreaus' voice will chance to match that environment. Essentially creating reverb when you're in a cave for example. This was especially noticeable on headphones and I found it to be really immersive and impressive. It was literally timed to the word so you could be running around outside having a conversation then all of a sudden you're in a new space a "boom" the ambience is adapting on the fly. Super cool.
The overall voice acting was phenomenal. I think my personal favourite performance was by Baldur who's emotionally tortured character was brought to life magnificently. Special mention to the two blacksmiths brothers Sindri and Brok who gave the game a tasteful comedic flair.
PERFORMANCE — 9/10
FRAME RATE (4)
I played the game at 60fps in 4k and it was an utter delight. Beyond this there are no additional graphics options other than lowering the frame rate to 30fps.
STABILITY (5)
I found some of the instances of interacting with object and pressing circle or square a little touchy but overall the game was super polished and I never encountered a single moment resembling a glitch.
GAMEPLAY — 28/40
CONTROLS (3)
I was thinking really hard for days about how I wanted to describe the feeling of controlling Kratos and I settled on this: its like I'm still in the cutscene. Its like you never really fully gain control of him. The over the shoulder perspective is a style I have a real aversion to in game's. In my personal experience its only ever worked like once or twice as a design choice. I grew somewhat accustomed to it in my 20 something hour playthrough but I still found it inferior. Its like Kratos is on a leash or something; like he's on training wheels. The locked strafing felt and looked goofy. Man, it was just so restrictive. Am I playing Gears of War or God of War? It's almost like this game wants to be a shooter. Especially with the frequent, gigantic gap between Kratos and the enemies. It always felt like I was having to close the distance and sprint after the enemies rather than have them in and around me to engage. It felt like there was so much wasted space when I was in fights. Definitely not how I like the play 3rd person games like this that encourage dexterity and positioning.
Ok, what about exploration? Luckily it was mostly good. Hucking Kratos' axe at switches was smooth as was controlling Atreus aim with his bow. There's a decent amount of climbing that pretty much just involves looking around and pressing circle to jump to the next ledge. These bits broke up the combat nicely although they really just left me feeling like "oh more of this?"
There's a boat that you'll spend a good amount of time in which felt good to control. Anytime you reach a dock the game gives you a huge window to press circle and pull up which was helpful.
MECHANICS (5)
I really appreciated the variety of puzzles and mechanics on offer outside of the game's combat. Puzzles were a mix of problem solving, exploration and memorization and regularly felt satisfying to solve.
Kratos' Leviathan axe is not only his main weapon but serves as a vital tool as well. The axe comes with special freezing properties that when thrown at objects can stop them in place or in the case of traps, temporarily nullify their hazardous properties. The axe was both easy to control and fun to use.
Its in the games combat where things really start to fall apart. The overwhelming amount of skills for your ax, shield, blades of chaos and Talon Bow felt totally unnecessary. This is just straight up quantity over quality. They become increasingly more redundant when you realize that 9 out of 10 times the quickest way to dispose of an enemy is to use your bare fists and build up their stun meter. I just didn't care! There were way too many options for different moves and abilities that I never bothered to use.
Its like the sandwich wasn't good enough so they felt they needed to keep adding sauces. No amount of different flavours is going to fix bad ingredients. What at its core is essentially a button masher is disguised with an atrocious amount of hollow distractions. If you're going to give the player special moves and abilities, make them special! Give me like 4 or 5 and make them count. Instead there are 66 skills for his 3 main weapons and an additional 21 for the Talon Bow. The Talon Bow skills were not as big a problem as they were passive skills that were permanent which made them feel important whereas Kratos 66 other moves just really felt like filler. Who is going to bother to use all of these let alone remember them all!? Sekiro had a lot of moves too but they mattered and the enemies demanded that you make use of them in certain ways. In God of War you can just brute force yourself through most obstacles with the press of a single button.
But we're not done yet because the Leviathan axe and the Blades of Chaos both come with Light Runic attacks and Heavy Runic attack which are essentially supermoves with a cooldown. I didn't manage to find all of these in the game as they're hidden in chests and behind side quests. If you include these this bring our total number of extra moves to somewhere in the tree digit territory which is just absurd.
Kratos' chest armour, wrist armour and waist armour can be upgraded and come with various sockets for gems. This reminded me a lot of Diablo and I was into it. Kratos also has a space for Talismans which grant him various special abilities and stat bonus'.
PACING (4)
The game moved along at a really good pace with a mixture of action and puzzles. The story took a bit of a dip in the second half but overall with the semi helpful compass and various hints from NPCs it was a good ride.
UI/UE (4)
I initially found the Menus to be very overwhelming, as I'm hoping that my explanation of the mechanics was able to illustrate. Besides the fact that I wasn't a big fan of the aesthetic either I think the UI and Menus were organized and once you got a grasp on everything that was involved, helpful.
BOSS QUALITY (3)
The bosses in God of War can be split up into 4 main categories. Main bosses, Trolls, Ancients and Valkyries. One of the main bosses you face off against 3 separate times leaving the game with 5 total main bosses. Of those five I think maybe two really impressed me.
The fight against Baldur, other than the impressive set pieces and cinematic quality were just dumb fights. He has an incredibly padded health bar and you just chase him down and punch him in the face over and over. Man it was frustrating. There's nothing obvious or exciting about his moveset and as a results no special feeling when you've learned to outsmart him. Something that for me is a key indicator of a good boss fight.
The Valkyries, were pretty sweet. I found one or two of them incredibly challenging and equipped with a wide range of moves and patterns that were satisfying to overcome. Its a shame these are optional because this is what was lacking from the main game.
My favourite fight was against a massive dragon name Hræzlyr, which felt like vintage God of War. But the game really needed like 3 of 4 more of these types of encounters that have cool mechanics, impressive set pieces and a sense of scale that is different from all the other combat that you do in the game.
ENEMY VARIETY (3)
I've gone back and forth about this one a bunch. The enemies in God of War come in a pretty good variety of shapes and sizes. Some are better taken care of with Atreus' bow and others - well you just bash them with your fists. The designs were genuinely cool and every single category of enemy has a unique finishing deathblow animation.
Where I'm not so sure God of War passes the sniff test is in its use of a numerical system to represent an enemies difficulty level and its overuse of reskins.
GAMEPLAY VARIETY (5)
The gameplay variety in God of War is immense! The world is packed full of so much to explore and secret areas within secret areas. Puzzles come in a variety of styles, collectibles are plentiful and it just always felt like there was something new to do.
REPLAYABILITY (3)
Once you complete to the main story you can continue to freely explore the world which was a cool feature.
The option for New Game + becomes available after you complete the game once and not only lets you keep all of you inventory, upgrades and skills but feature new enemy behaviour, unlock able armour sets and several unique new features as well that make it worth exploring at least once.
BONUS — 1/3
God of War offers assist modes for its quick time events.
OVERALL — 83/100
GREAT
There are aspects of God of War that are incredible but for me overall it was not. What it was was a great game; a special, immersive experience that is state of the art in many ways. I was entertained and moved and on that front they game absolutely excelled. Its presentation is S tier even if its fundamentals are not.
PROS
✅ State of the art visuals
✅ Huge gameplay variety
✅ Outstanding voice acting
✅ Ultra polished presentation
CONS
❌ Soundtrack is lacking
❌ Combat is one dimensional
❌ Boss fights could have been better
❌ Controls were a drag
TLDR: 83/100 (GREAT) God of War is a visually stunning and emotionally resonant journey that excels in presentation, storytelling, and variety, but falters slightly in core gameplay. With a gripping father-son narrative, beautifully crafted environments rooted in Norse mythology, and seamless cutscenes, the game delivers a cinematic experience like few others. Its character models, voice acting, and world-building are top-tier, yet the combat—though flashy—feels bloated and repetitive, with an overload of moves and upgrades that rarely feel necessary. The soundtrack is serviceable but unmemorable, and boss encounters, while occasionally impressive, lack consistent impact. Still, with an expansive world, meaningful puzzles, and rich side content, God of War stands as a great game, offering a polished, modern adventure that’s emotionally and mechanically ambitious, if not always perfectly balanced.
PICK UP (GAME NAME) HERE:
PlayStation: https://www.playstation.com/en-ca/games/god-of-war/
PC: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1593500/God_of_War/
CHECK OUT OUR VIDEO REVIEW HERE
0 Comments